QUALITY-MANAGEMENT.pdf

by your answers to the questions: “Why am I on the pay? What have I been hired to

accomplish?”

Set Clear Priorities

Many problems arise in a business for a variety of reasons. First, neither the individual nor the

boss is clear about the key result areas and the outputs required for the success of the business or

department. Second, people are not clear about the priorities among key results and are easily

distracted into doing things of low value. As management consultant Benjamin Tregoe once said

“The very worse use of time is to do very well what need not be done at all.”The definition of

key result areas is the critical determinant of managerial effectiveness. This is because 80% of

the value of what you do will be determined by 20% of your activities.

In some jobs and positions, it can be that 90% of what you do is represented by 10% of your

work. If you don’t know what the top10% or 20% of your activities are, there is no way that you

can perform to distinction. If you don’t know wha

t your key result areas are, your natural

tendency will be to spend more and more time doing things of less and less value.

Find the Right People

For example, a key result area of the manager is recruiting and staffing; finding the right people

for the right jobs. As Jim Collins wrote in his book

Good to Great

, top managers are those who

“get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus, and then get the right people in

t

he right seats on the bus.”

Your ability as a manager to find the right people, to interview and select them carefully, and

then to put them into the key positions in your area of responsibility is something that only you

can do. If you don’t do it, or do it poorly, no one else can do it for you or change it. But if

you

select the right people and put them together with others to form a right-performance team, you

can make an extraordinary contribution to your business.